Homemade ragu

Many years ago now on an episode of No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain was in Italy visiting and ended up having Sunday dinner at one of their local minder’s (or cameraman) grandma’s house. Very commonly they make a Sunday gravy or Ragu that is cooked all day. At the end of it, you have a wonderfully deep ragu sauce along with a plate of meat (that is used to flavor the sauce as it cooks). From what I remember, you have the ragu sauce on some pasta and then can eat the meat separately. There isn’t a specific recipe and many people have basically just put together the ingredients by watching the episode closely. I think I first made this dish back in 2011 for D’s birthday. Since then I probably try to make it at least once a year.

Since there isn’t a specific recipe that I follow, I just kind of go with my gut in terms of amounts. Also I have done variations depending on the availability of products (usually the types of meat that I can find). Here’s a rough outline of what I do and what I put in it (again these recipes are usually for me to reference in the future rather than trying to find where I originally used a recipe).

Tomato Puree (1 jar)
Crushed/diced/whole canned tomato (28 oz)
Garlic (1-4 cloves)
Onion (yellow, sweet)
Beef stock / chicken broth / water (have done all of these before)
Pine nuts
Raisins
Rind of parmigiana Reggiano
Fresh basil
Sweet Italian Sausage (2-4)
Beef ribs / cap of beef rib / veal / Braciola
Bay leaf
Dried Oregano
Salt/pepper
Extra virgin olive oil

Brown meats in large stock pot, then remove
Sauté onion (diced), then add garlic (sliced)
Add tomato puree and other tomato products, add bay leaves
Wrap pine nuts, raisins, rind of parmigiana in cheese cloth and tie with string and add to pot
Add in chopped basil
Add meat back into pot with the stock/water (and oregano)
Bring to boil then reduce heat until occasional burbling happens
Remove fat that rises to surface
Cook for as long as desired (minimum probably 2-3 hours but could go much longer) – I cooked mine mostly uncovered, stirring intermittently.
Remove meat and cheesecloth and bay leaves
Add Italian parsley
Add pasta water and combine with pasta and top with freshly grated parmigiana Reggiano

This meal we paired it with some pasta and then also roasted some baby broccoli to go with the meat.

-StewsCat

New (to me) pizza dough recipe

I tried a new pizza dough recipe this past weekend – mostly due to my lack of planning. I oftentimes start putting the dough together the night before to allow the yeast to essentially knead the dough with a long fermentation. However I forgot to do this so woke up on Sunday realizing I needed a quicker recipe. I have done my usual same-day bread recipe for pizza dough but was wondering if there was another option. After some google searching, I settled on a recipe that sounded fairly simple yet good. This recipe is adapted from Roberta’s (a well-known pizzeria in Brooklyn, NY). I didn’t have any 00 flour so just used AP flour for the entire recipe.

Ingredients:

306 g AP flour
8 g fine sea salt
2 g active dry yeast
4 g olive oil
200 g warm tap water

I combined the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. In my measuring cup, I combined the warm water, olive oil and dry yeast. I allowed the yeast to bloom for a few minutes before mixing it with the flour/salt mixture. I kneaded/mixed the dough in the bowl for 3 minutes.

I then covered the bowl with a towel and let it sit for 15 minutes.

I proceeded to knead the dough again for 3 minutes within the bowl. I was a bit surprised how much the dough had formed up into a cohesive ball.

Earlier in the day I had made some pasta so had a large sheet of parchment paper on the counter that was floured.

So I just took the dough and placed it on the parchment paper, divided the dough in half, and formed two balls.

I let the dough rest under a towel (I used my water bottle sprayer to mist the top to maintain moisture) for about 3 hours. The dough continued to rise.

img_20170108_174749 — *After 3 hours of rest*

I preheated my oven to 545F. I took one ball of dough and on a well-floured countertop flattened the dough out into a pizza shape. I then topped it with marinara, mozzarella, mushrooms, zucchini.

About 1-2 minutes before the pizza was done, I removed it and topped it with some prosciutto.

Et voilà

The above recipe makes 2 good-sized pizzas. I did like this recipe because the dough seemed sturdier than ones I’ve made in the past. It was easy to create the pizza shape and didn’t rip/tear like some of the ones I’ve created. Overall I thought the taste was decent.

-StewsCat

Semolina egg pasta

I picked up some semolina durum wheat flour at the local specialty grocery store (Corti Bros.). I had been making some egg noodles for pasta the last few months with AP flour. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make a dough entirely out of just semolina so looked up some recipes. I found that you can do a 50:50 semolina:AP flour mix.

100g – Semolina durum wheat flour
100g – AP flour
2 eggs
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp Avocado oil (we don’t have any olive oil in the house currently)

I started by weighing out the flour and adding the salt.

I mixed it together with my fingers because I don’t have a sifter.

Then I created a well to place the eggs and oil. I used a fork to scramble the eggs.

I slowly mixed in the flour with the egg mixture and continued to mix and then knead for about 5 minutes, creating a cohesive dough ball.

I let the dough sit at room temperature for about 1.5 hours (I read you should let it sit for at least an hour but can let it sit for multiple hours if needed). In the meantime, I started work on the sauce. I already had some plain San Marzano tomato sauce that I had made previously for pizza. Now I just needed to make the other ingredients added to the pasta and the sauce.

I sautéed some chicken sausage, then vegetables and finally added in the pre-made tomato sauce.

Then I went back to work on the pasta dough. I broke off between a golf ball and tennis ball sized piece, flattened it into a disc and floured it. I have a small hand crank pasta machine. One half of it has rollers of adjustable thickness to gradually thin out the pasta dough. On the thickest setting I ran the disc of dough through once. Then I folded this in half, re-dusted with flour, and put it through again. I did this 4-5 times before then gradually decreasing the thickness (from 7 to 3).

The other half of the pasta machine has 2 different rollers of various widths for pasta. This cuts the thin length of dough into actual strands of pasta.

What I’ve learned is that after you create the strands of pasta, you need to liberally dust/cover the pasta strands to prevent them from sticking together. The great thing about freshly made pasta is that it cooks super quick. I boiled up some water and salted it and then added the pasta. I cooked the pasta for about 3 minutes and then drained out the water and added some oil to the pasta.